As my countdown to retirement draws closer, a few endings become apparent. The biggest ending for me is career. But there are other things that will be ending as well.

One of my bucket list items is to never be cold again in retirement. We intend to spend our winters in our coach traveling the southern U.S.

And that means one of my favourite concerts, Celebrate Christmas, will also retire when I do after a lengthy run in Kingston.

This is an event that I have produced since 2008. I also play. You might make me out as the guitar player out front, house right, in the photos above.

Most of my family helps out. My oldest son has served on bass since we started this event. My youngest son is part of the lighting crew. And Lorraine does all of the heavy lifting related to logistics. We coordinate a team of about 40 people for the show.

We have been fortunate to sell out the show every year. This being the final year, we elected to run for two nights, Thursday December 14 and Friday December 15 at the beautiful Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.

Friday night’s performance will be tough. I’ll probably keep it together for most of the evening but I suspect the last song will be bittersweet for sure.

I’ve put so much work into this program over the years and I will be sad to see it go. But, for everything we do in life, there is a time to grow and a time to let go.

I do plan to keep playing in retirement and focusing more on my jazz guitar. Not sure that I will still be playing large performance halls in retirement though. Maybe on a sidewalk somewhere 😉

Here is one of the songs from last year’s event. I get to have a bit of fun towards the end.